Well, it wasn’t exactly without some pain, but I got to where I thought I should get, and that is I installed the Smart Client Software Factory – May 2007 (SCSF) in Visual Studio 2008.
Here is a helpful resource in getting this done: http://staff.southworks.net/blogs/ejadib/archive/2007/08/27/How_2D00_To_3A00_-Smart-Client-Software-Factory-_2800_SCSF_2900_-_2600_-Visual-Studio-Orcas-Beta-2.aspx.
Nonetheless, it took a while to get there. Here are the issues I ran into and the configuration that ultimately worked:
- I used Virtual PC 2007 to do this in an isolated environment.
- My first virtual PC was Windows XP with Service Pack 2. I downloaded and installed Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, Professional Edition, and could not see the Smart Client solution when creating new projects. This seemed odd so I installed the source code of the SCSF. I proceeded to enable Guidance Package Development and ran into type load exceptions here there and everywhere. Not good… I researched and tried many different approaches, but nothing worked.
- Then, talking with a friend made a lightbulb go off in my mind. What if the particular edition of Visual Studio had an impact? After all, this is a beta 2 and there are bound to be some issues. So I proceeded to download Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, Team Suite Edition, on a prepackaged virtual hard drive (see http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=3b72271c-e996-4989-898d-72d684966ce6&DisplayLang=en). The OS in this virtual machine is Windows Server 2003 SP2. I performed the same SCSF installation steps as before, and, SUCCESS. It worked. I even exercised most recipes to make sure this was valid. And it was.
Conclusion: SCSF can be used with Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, and presumably, with Visual Studio 2008 RTC once it’s available. Note that I have not tested making an installed from the SCSF source, so I cannot ascertain that it could be modified under Visual Studio 2008.
